


Here Be Dragons

by KeeperOfTheMoonAndStars



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Introspection, Major character death - Freeform, Post-His Last Vow, post series 3, post-HLV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-21
Updated: 2014-07-21
Packaged: 2018-02-09 21:22:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1998276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KeeperOfTheMoonAndStars/pseuds/KeeperOfTheMoonAndStars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes is not a dragon slayer.<br/>Because, you see, dragon slayers get a happily ever after.<br/>---<br/>In which Moriarty's face was never broadcasted across all of England, and Sherlock flies off to Eastern Europe. He does not last six months.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here Be Dragons

_Hic sunt dracones_.

The earliest known usage of the term dates back to 1503, when earth and sea and sky were still mysteries, when adventure was still a common occurrence. Three Latin words inscribed on a globe: HC SVNT DRACONES. A warning. Here is danger, here is uncharted water. He who ventures here dares to face the unknown.

_Here be dragons._

\---

The cigarette is necessary. It’s Christmas, and Sherlock is at his parent’s house, and Mycroft is insufferable, and John is making up with his wife. His wife. His gun-wielding, lying, ex-assassin wife. Mary Morstan, if she can even legally be called by that name. Mary _Watson_. Yes. After months of radio silence, John is finally taking her back. She is, once again, properly Mary Watson.

 The cigarette is definitely necessary.

He exhales, blows smoke into the wind, turns his coat collar turned up against the chill. Taps ash against the stone wall. _Mummy mustn’t know._ She won’t, she won’t. The door opens, creaks, closes again. Mycroft steps up beside him, notices the cigarette, says nothing. Sherlock smokes in silence, baring the weight of his brother’s judgment, until the cigarette burns down to the filter. Mycroft offers him another one. Sherlock accepts, doesn’t meet his brother’s eyes, crushes the old cigarette beneath his foot. “Mummy will know, Sherlock.” Perhaps she will. Sherlock says nothing.

Mycroft sighs, lifts another cigarette from the pack, twirls it thoughtfully between his fingers. Sherlock inhales, exhales, forces a satisfied smile he does not feel. Mycroft eyes him, clearly unconvinced, but he sticks the grey paper between his lips and lights it anyway. Silence. Inhale, exhale, smoke on the wind. Dragon’s breath clouding the winter air.

Mycroft is the first to speak. “I’m glad you’ve given up on the Magnussen business.”

“Are you?”

“I’m still curious, though. He’s hardly your usual kind of puzzle. Why do you ... hate him?”

 _Because he had information about Mary, information she felt she needed to eradicate, which led to the break in, which led to the shooting,_ my _shooting, which lead to the confrontation in Leinster Gardens and the downfall of John’s happiness._

Can’t say that. Sentiment. Sherlock turns to face Mycroft, look him right in the eyes.

“Because he attacks people who are different and preys on their secrets. Why don’t you?”

“He never causes too much damage to anyone important,” Momentary rage burns through Sherlock. _He caused damage to John_ , he thinks, _and John is of the utmost importance. The only one of any importance. John is_ vital.

“He’s far too intelligent for that.” Mycroft continues, pretending to be blissfully unaware of what he’s just implied. “He’s a business-man, that’s all, and occasionally useful to us. A necessary evil – not a dragon for you to slay.”

The metaphor makes Sherlock smirk. Dragons and princes and fairytales, damsels in distress. “A dragon slayer. Is that what you think of me?”

“No,” A knowing grin, a head tilt in his direction. Sherlock lifts the cigarette. Inhales. “It’s what you think of yourself.”

\---

Dragon slayers are heroes, proud and dauntless and chivalric. Rescuing maidens, killing beasts, and riding off into the medieval sunset. Never flounder, never fail.

\--

“Very hard to find a pressure point on you, Mister Holmes.”

John walks towards the footage projected on the screen.

“The drugs thing I never believed for a moment.”

A small, semi-pixelated Sherlock tosses burning wood in every direction, heedless of his own clothes or hands, shouting John’s name in a voice ragged with desperation.

“Anyway, you wouldn’t care if it was exposed, would you?”

John watches.

“But look how you care about John Watson.”

The footage repeats. Sherlock yanks John from the bonfire again, again, again, his heart so close to burning.

“Your damsel in distress.”

John sees.

\---

Sherlock rescued his damsel, killed his beast, and, if prison counts as a medieval sunset, then he rode straight into it.

But he did flounder.

He did fail.

\---

“I have, by the way, a job offer I should like you to decline.” Mycroft says.

“I decline your kind offer.”

“I shall pass on your regrets.”

The whole exchange is nonchalant, careless.

A pause, then Sherlock’s curiosity gets the better of him. “What was it?”

“MI6,” Mycroft replies. _Of course._ Sherlock raises the cigarette to his lips again. “They want to place you back into Eastern Europe. An undercover assignment that would prove fatal to you in, I think, about six months.”

The cigarette freezes halfway, a small golden ember glowing against the backdrop of Sherlock’s coat.

“Then why don’t you want me to take it?”

Mycroft turns to look at him. “It’s tempting ... but on balance you have more utility closer to home.”

Sherlock scoffs. “Utility! How do I have utility?”

The cigarette continues its path to Sherlock’s lips, and he takes another drag. Mycroft shuffles in place and shrugs ever so slightly.

 “Here be dragons.”

\---

Sherlock Holmes is not a dragon slayer.

Because dragon slayers get to keep their prize, you see. A maiden, some money, a pelt of shimmering scales.

Sherlock Holmes is not a dragon slayer.

 Because, you see, dragon slayers get a happily ever after.

\---

He goes to Eastern Europe.

He does not last six months

\---

Sebastian Moran, Moriarty’s right-hand man. Four years ago, Moran was given an assignment in London: if Sherlock Holmes does not jump, kill John Watson. Three snipers, three people, and a phone conversation from atop Saint Bart’s. John Watson watched his best friend end his own life, coattails flapping like broken wings before crashing to the pavement below. The scope on the gun was aimed at John’s heart the entire time, but Moran did not need to fire a bullet to witness it shatter.

Three years ago, Moran carried out the second half of the assignment: make sure Sherlock Holmes stays dead.

What better way to do that than to restart his heart?

After four months of digging in yet another underground network, Sherlock finds seemingly the only person on the face of the earth who knew anything substantial about Sebastian Moran. For instance, the fact that Sebastian was code for Sabrina. Sabrina Moran, the mother of Moriarty’s network. The Madonna. Mary, the Madonna.

Mary Moran.

Mary Morstan.

\---

The information he sends back to Mycroft is enough to have Mary imprisoned. Sherlock is informed that her child was actually David’s.

 He is given no news of John.

\---

Sometime in mid-April, it occurs to him that dragons only kidnap damsels to lure in the prince.

About a week after that, he realizes that the prince must kill the dragon, or else it will hunt for its damsel until the end of time.

He cannot go home just yet.

_Here be dragons._

\---

By disposing of Moran, Sherlock has awakened the beast, stuck his sword right in its eye.

It does not intend to let him out alive.

\---

Countless days and countless dragons slain, yet never the right one, never the _last_ one, never an end in sight. Not from his viewpoint, at least.

The dragons might have some other ideas.

\---

“Are you the last?”

“Yes.”

“Liar.”

A chuckle, humorless.

“I know who you are, Mister Holmes. It would be no use.”

The tiniest glimmer of relief, of hope, of home on the horizon.

“It really wouldn’t.”

An unmistakable click.

“That is why I brought a gun.”

Sherlock isn’t given a chance to respond.

The gun fires, and, for the third time in his life, Sherlock falls.

\---

 _An East Wind is coming,_ he thinks. _It takes us all in the end._

\---

Another time, another place. The tarmac that will become home to all his daydreams ( _staying here, always here, never boarding the plane, telling him, telling him, telling him._ )

John, resplendent in the blue-gold light, unable to meet his eyes. “The game is over.”

“The game is never over, John.” He must understand. Please, God, let him understand. “But there may be some new players now. It’s okay. The East Wind takes us all in the end.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a story my brother told me when we were kids. The East Wind – this terrifying force that lays waste to all in its path.” He looks out at the airfield, at the sky, the grass, the dust motes floating in the air. Anywhere but John. “It seeks out the unworthy,” his eyes find John’s and refuse to move. “and plucks them from the Earth. That was generally me.”

\---

An East Wind is coming, and he is unworthy.

\---

A startled laugh escapes John’s lips. “Nice,”

Sherlock gives a faint smile. “He was a rubbish big brother.”

\---

“An undercover assignment that would prove fatal to you in, I think, about six months.”

It’s only been four, but that doesn’t matter. Sherlock died the minute the plane lifted from the tarmac.

Mycroft was wrong.

Sherlock cannot find it within himself to care.

\---

“So what about you, then? Where are you actually going now?”

“Oh, some undercover work in Eastern Europe.”

“For how long?”

Sherlock cannot meet John’s eyes. He looks over the top of his head, instead. “Six months, my brother estimates. He’s never wrong.”

“And then what?”

Sherlock meets his gaze, looks down, looks away again. “Who knows?”

\---

Sherlock Holmes is dying. This, he knows.

What comes after, he is less certain. Nobody is certain.

 _Here be dragons_.

\---

“John, there’s something ... I should say; I-I’ve meant to say always and then never have. Since it’s unlikely we’ll ever meet again, I might as well say it now.”

_I love you._

_I love you, and here be dragons._

\---

Deep down, he always knew it would be the work that killed him. The one thing he lived for would be the death of him. Blood weeping from a stab wound or bullet hole, the hazy glow of London lights just visible beyond the rooftops of the alleyway he lay in. Dying, but so very alive. Poetic, in a twisted sort of way.

Never in his life did he imagine that he would not want the work to be how it ends.

Never in his life did he imagine he would have something else worth living for.

But John Watson is not in danger, this time.

He made sure of that.

\---

In a way, he does die the way he thought. A criminal and a bullet, a dark cellar in a cold country he cannot recall the name of. The thug wants to shoot him in the head, bleach the colors of that neon brain.

Sherlock does not bother to tell him that shooting his heart would be more poetic.

The bullet finds its way there anyway.

\---

Here be dragons.

For once in his life, Sherlock Holmes does not know. Pain is ripping him apart, eating him alive, piercing one of his most vital organs. This has happened before, and the remedy was obvious, so obvious. _You, it’s always you, John Watson._ But John is safe now, they no longer share a heart, and his death is imminent, and he cannot stop it. This, he does know.

He was shot, and John is safe, and the last dragon flew away in a blaze of glory, and Mary is gone, and John is safe, and he is about to die, and he does not know what comes next, and he is not a dragon slayer. This, he does know.

John is safe, and he loves John, but John will never know, because here be dragons, and he was shot in the _heart_ , and he is bleeding, and he is dying, and John will never know, because John is not a dragon slayer, either. This, too, he knows.

The East Wind is coming, and he is unworthy of John Watson, the best and bravest man he’s ever known, who saved him so many times and in so many ways but who cannot save him now, who is, in fact, the reason he will never be saved again, never _need_ to be saved again, and he is unworthy of John Watson, and the East Wind takes the unworthy from the earth. Where it takes them;  this, he does not know.

Somewhere on this earth, John Watson still breathes. This, he knows.

He loves John Watson. This, he knows.

He is dying, and here be dragons.

**Author's Note:**

> His Last Vow transcript can be found [here](http://arianedevere.livejournal.com/67234.html).
> 
> I fully intend to come back and edit this. I just need to let it sit for awhile, yet I also want immediate gratification, so there you go.
> 
> Come be friends on [my tumblr!](http://honeycholmes.tumblr.com)


End file.
